Add the option to send a message while adding someone to your circle

[rivenwanderer]

Title:
Add the option to send a message while adding someone to your circle

Area:
circle management UI

Summary:
When adding someone to your circle, sometimes you might want to send a note to that person introducing yourself as part of that process. I think it would be easy to add to the existing UI.

Description:
I've taken to sometimes sending people a note on DW when I friend them; I'm adding a lot of people I don't necessarily already know (which I didn't do on LJ). And of course there's nothing wrong with sending a note as a separate step! But I think it would be totally awesome if this was possible to do in a more integrated way:

Imagine if the "add to circle page" (http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/circle/add?user=[person]) had a checkbox reading "Add a message introducing myself" below the "Select colors" checkbox area. When clicked, it would reveal a small textarea for adding a note. Then, when the "Add [person]" button was clicked, the user you just added would also be sent a message titled something like "Add To Circle intro message from So-and-so". (It would either need to be from So-and-so, or have some other mechanism for replying to it easily). (Oh, and the checkbox would obviously only appear in the first place when adding a journal, not a community, and only when the user had permission to send a message to that account.)

Possible use-cases for introducing yourself that I can think of: telling the other person what names on other websites they might know you by, saying what interests you about their writing, noting whether or not you know each other IRL, or requesting to be on filters they've publicized the existence of. I think that it can personalize the "some random stranger subscribed to your journal" experience a lot, and making it easier for people to do so can only be a good thing.

I think this would be a relatively unobtrusive UI addition, unlikely to bother people who don't use it. And like journal colors, I don't think it needs to be integrated with the one-click adding thingie in the user context hover.

The only downside I can think of would be cluttering the inbox a bit (now you get 3 messages if someone subscribes, grants access, and PMs you).

Poll #1059 Add the option to send a message while adding someone to your circle

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 46

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
14 (30.4%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
17 (37.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
8 (17.4%)

(I have no opinion)
7 (15.2%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

(extreme minor editing for verb tense, 1:48am EDT)

Comments

[ratcreature]

This would be subject to the "who can PM me" settings though, not one of the system notifications that get through, yes? i.e. that if I had chosen that nobody could PM me then I wouldn't get messages if with their subscription either.

One worry I have is that my journal might then seem "uninviting" because of PM settings, because people will get a sort of error message first as their interaction with me. What I mean is that I like it when people read my journal and subscribe to it, strangers or not, but I'm less fond of getting PMs (though I actually don't recall whether what my settings for those are on DW now), so when someone subscribes to me they would get some sort of message that they can't talk to me, so that might seem like I don't welcome people, even though I like others reading my journal.

Also I wonder how that kind of feature will work with the spam friending bots. I mean it's true that DW doesn't have those yet, and maybe the invite system is enough to prevent this altogether, but it would be worse if you didn't get generic friending notifications from bots but they could message you in the same step.

[yvi]

I would rather see a 'send PM to this user' option on the 'Success page' which just forwards you to compose.bml with the user name filled in. Not that fond of having this in the adding process, but also not opposed to it :)

[cesy]

This sounds like a sensible way of doing it.

[zvi]

+1

[zarhooie]

I like yvi's idea above.

I am concerned about trying to send PMs to users who don't allow PMs from non-access-granted individuals. The OP suggests that the text box just doesn't show up. I think that is bad UI. I'd prefer that a note (in lieu of a box) pops up saying "This user does not allow PMs from $TYPE."

[cheyinka]

Yeah, that's better, I think. If it's obvious that you're sending a PM, not a special hi-I-added-you-message, then the inability to send it (only accepts PMs from access list, doesn't accept PMs, whatever) is "only" because you can't send PMs to that user, not because that user "doesn't want to be added" or whatever.

[kyrielle]

I like this better, too.

[pseudomonas]

Yes, I like this one, and with no default text. Most users who want to know will already get a notification that they've been subscribed to; unless there's something personal to add, a boilerplate message would just be annoying.

[rivenwanderer]

That's a good idea! I like it :)

[lassarina]

What about an ability to, instead of PMing, add it into the basic message that is sent to notify a user of being added? I'm not sure if that violates the security feeling of having blocked PMs, though.

[triadruid]

This.

[scemo]

+1

I'll let someone else comment on what'd be best for PM-blocking, as I don't do that myself. :)

[zvi]

Yes, that would violate the security feature of having blocked PMs big time.

For one thing, someone that you'd banned could unsubscribe and resubscribe ten million times in a row, sending you messages. Let's not do that at all.

[willow]

Considering that when I was posting to my DW, I had on my sticky-post and my info/profile that I preferred people to PM me when they added me - I think having the PM notice anywhere in the adding process would at least jog the memory of people or remind them that some individuals do not like blind adds.

My philosophy has been, if someone can't take the time to tell me 'Hey, reading you' as a sort of introduction, then I ban them from my journal since they don't want a relationship with me, they can just read me like a feed.

[softestbullet]

Agreed! Augh.

[softestbullet]

+1

[softestbullet]

Sounds good.

[azurelunatic]

This.

[ancientsavvy]

+1

[archangelbeth]

It's a cool notion... But I'd be worried that it'd be easy to cause automation of spamming ("add everyone and paste in SPAM-INTRO"), and as noted, it'd probably be subject to the "who can PM me" settings.

And if it wasn't* subject to those... I can see how add/remove/add/remove/add/remove could be used abusively: Consider "Crazy_Ex" finding zir "Dumped_Crazy_Ex" and sending a million-zillion Add:"Hey, I found you" (remove), Add:"You can't get away" (remove), Add:"You're a crazy **** and you never shoulda dumped me."

So, I vote no. Sorry!